Under Her Clothes

The boy’s jaw snapped shut with a click, that muscle throbbing again in a way that made Dom wonder if Colby was grinding his teeth. “No, chef. Two weeks, heard.”

“You have something more important to do?” Dom asked gently. “If so, please, feel free to leave now. And don’t come back.”

“No, chef.” Colby didn’t drop his gaze for an instant, and Dominic felt reluctant respect burning through the haze of stifled desire.

What was it about Colby? Dom was drawn to him as though invisible threads tied them together, tightening and pulling and wire-taut with tension. Without meaning to, he’d stepped right into Colby’s space, almost toe-to-toe, as if he were daring the kid to challenge him. Any other chef in this kitchen, Dom knew, would be backing down, hunching shoulders and trying to make himself smaller to escape the searing focus of Dom’s intense regard.

But Colby St. James never seemed to do what Dom expected. No, this young man, who was here only because a friend of Eva’s had gotten him into the interview process at the last minute, didn’t hunch. He squared his shoulders and didn’t lower his eyes, and only by the quick rise and fall of his wiry chest did Colby betray any reaction to the tension that crackled between them.

“Chef?” Colby muttered, so quietly Dom thought no one else in the kitchen could hear. “I’m not giving up. No disrespect intended. Your intimidation routine is kick-ass, but I’m in it to win it.”

Dom realized exactly how long he’d been staring silently, looming over Colby and ignoring the rest of the candidates as if they were alone in the kitchen. Dragging his gaze from Colby’s ripe, tempting bottom lip, Dominic nodded briskly and stepped back.

“All of you, report to Antonio,” he ordered hoarsely. “He’ll give you your line assignments for the day. Each of you will have the chance to show what you’ve got at the different stations. I expect any chef I recommend for the job of executive chef to be more than competent at every aspect of kitchen work, from prep to dessert. Maison de Ville will be open as usual. Do not embarrass me.”

Good advice, Dom reflected as the chef candidates all but saluted before marching over to Antonio at the grill station. Dominic could stand to remember not to embarrass himself.

A touch on his forearm turned the muscles there to corded steel. No one touched him in his kitchen. Ever.

Even before he rounded on the offender, the spark of sexual electricity zinging up his arm told him who it was. Of course. Colby fucking St. James.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot, chef,” the kid was saying confidently with a bright smile.

“Let me give you a hint, Colby St. James.” Dom leaned in, close enough to feel that spark jump between them like static. “Failing to follow my orders for the second time in the first hour is not the way to impress me.”

“Maybe not.” Colby’s lips quirked in a subtle smirk that shot straight to Dom’s dick. “But you know my name. I stood out from the pack.”

That was true enough to make the hairs on the back of Dom’s neck stand at attention. “Standing out for having a smart mouth isn’t what most people want. I should throw you out of my restaurant right now.”

Colby’s thin chest heaved once. “But you won’t.”

“Why not?” Part of Dom truly wanted a reason.

“Because.” Colby straightened his white sleeves, twitching them proudly over his scarred forearms, laddered with burn marks that told the story of a chef who had served his time and earned his bones. “You want to see what I’ve got.”

God, yes. The words called to something in Dominic, a primal urge to strip the white chef’s coat off Colby’s body, to bare all that skin to Dom’s hungry gaze and possessive touch. Fire raged under his skin, all the more devastating because it caught him by surprise. Dom wrestled with his impulses, clenching his fists behind his back to keep from reaching out for Colby.

Colby licked his bottom lip as if he knew what it would do to Dom. Those dark blue eyes snapped with challenge. “You want to see if I can back up this smart mouth with my kitchen skills. And I’m here to prove I can.”

“Maybe,” Dom rasped, stamping out the flickering fire as best he could. “But your skills will have to be exceptional to get me to overlook your tendency to talk back.”

“I can take orders when I need to.” For the first time, Colby’s gaze dropped, but it wasn’t submissive. Just the opposite, in fact. “But I’m a leader in the kitchen. And correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what this interview process is all about—finding someone to lead the team at the new restaurant.”

The fact that Colby was right only fanned the flames. Desire like he’d never felt roared through Dom’s system, shocking and disorienting and obliterating all logical thought. “And you believe that’s you. But you haven’t got the job yet, and right now? You’re in my house. My rules. So why don’t you run along and do everything Antonio tells you—and then you stay after service to close down. Every night. For two weeks...or as long as you last.”

See how Colby liked being singled out for that. Closing down was a punishment detail, reserved for whoever had screwed up and earned Dom’s wrath during service. Even though he ran a tight, clean ship, at the end of service the kitchen still tended to look like a war zone. Washing down the stations, mopping the floors, scrubbing out the grease traps—no one liked closing down, but it had to be done.

His crew was already thrilled to be getting time off while these chef candidates rotated through their stations. They’d be even happier to be off scrub detail for two full weeks.

Colby St. James obviously wasn’t happy. But instead of objecting, as Dom had almost hoped he would, Colby rolled his shoulders and gave a tight smile. “You think a little mopping is going to scare me off? Every hard-ass chef I’ve ever cooked for has given me the shit work. You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

Fury and desire and denial exploded like a Molotov cocktail in Dom’s chest. It took everything he had to keep from hauling Colby in close—to shake him or kiss him or both. “Don’t push me, boy. Or you’ll find out what it’s like to work under a real hard-ass.”

Colby’s gaze narrowed as awareness sizzled between them. His perfect, damnably kissable mouth tilted up at the corners. “Promises, promises,” he murmured as he slipped past Dominic to join the other chef candidates.

Dom watched him go, the subtle twitch of lean hips under the shapeless white jacket and black checked chef pants, and felt a subsonic growl building in the back of his throat. His cock was a heavy, throbbing weight between his legs, aching for the touch of another man for the first time in a decade. What the hell was happening to him?

* * *

Disaster. Catastrophe. Epic cock-up of the worst possible kind. The buzzing in Colby’s ears nearly drowned out the sous chef’s lightly accented voice as he outlined the duties the chef candidates would be taking over for that night’s dinner shift.

Contrary to what she’d said to Chef Fevre in a moment of brash insanity, Colby hadn’t been looking to stand out. At least, not for anything other than her unparalleled abilities with a knife. And now here she was, not an hour into an audition process that was going to take—oh, God—two full weeks, and she’d already pissed off the head chef enough to make him put her on cleanup duty.

It was hard not to despair that even in guy drag, she was still about to be handed a mop and a bucket.

But she couldn’t help it. The intense attraction she felt to Chef Fevre turned her into a crazy person. And what was worse, she’d even become delusional—because she could swear that at one point back there, the attraction had gone from a one-way street to a four-lane freeway with no speed limit.

Was Chef Dominic Fevre, the most alpha, badass drill sergeant of an executive chef in Manhattan, secretly gay? That alone wouldn’t be enough to blow her mind; Colby knew plenty of gay men and women who could hold their own in any kitchen in the city.

But for a guy like Fevre, the poster boy for the old-school French brigade system, anything other than pure hetero was a bit off brand.

Making a mental note to kill Grant for not telling her—because there was no way her gay best friend Grant’s infallible gaydar had malfunctioned—Colby forced herself to focus on what the sous chef was saying, rather than on the skin-prickling awareness of the executive chef standing somewhere behind her.

But all through the painstaking process of making the sauce espagnole—which she’d been assigned while the other candidates smirked—Colby felt Dominic watching her. For the first time in her career, she found herself grateful for the way she’d always had to fight and scrap to get any respect, because the mental toughness she’d developed as a woman in a man’s world was all that got her through that first day of observation.

Colby loved cooking. She loved the intricate balance of creativity and craftsmanship that chefs at the highest level got to play with. The fast-paced, high-stakes world of restaurant cooking was not for everyone, but Colby had been addicted since her first job washing dishes for a three-star Italian joint back in DC. She loved the heat, the noise, the adrenaline jolt of pounding out dish after perfect dish under the suffocating pressure of the dinner rush.

But she didn’t want to stay on the line forever, churning out someone else’s vision. She wanted a kitchen of her own, where she’d finally have the freedom and independence to cook her kind of food. Too bad starting a restaurant on her own would require a loan so big, the last bank had actually laughed at her. And despite how good Colby knew she was, most restaurateurs hesitated to hire women for the top spot, fearing that they wouldn’t be able to command the respect of their line cooks.

So respect had to be earned. Fine. All Colby wanted was a shot—and a chance to prove to the biggest restaurateur in Manhattan that she could do this job.

However, first she had to make it through tonight’s dinner service. Not only was Chef Fevre’s serious, diamond-hard stare a major distraction, threatening to make her add sugar instead of salt, or cut off a pinky while dicing carrots and onions to a tiny, perfectly uniform brunoise for the mirepoix. That was bad enough, but Colby could handle it. She’d trained herself to respond to intimidation and scorn by working harder and smarter until she outshone everyone around her.

Bigger assholes than Chef Fevre had expected Colby to give up and wash out, and they’d been disappointed. His obvious disapproval only made her want it more. But this time was different. This time she wasn’t just fighting to prove herself—she was fighting to prove a point to a restaurateur who could make or break Colby’s future. And to do that, she’d have to keep this charade going for a lot longer than the single hour, one-on-one interview she’d planned for.

What had seemed like a breeze, or at least doable, when she’d come up with this plan suddenly felt like an impossibly high mountain to climb.

Colby carried a tray of roasted veal bones into the walk-in cooler and heaved them into an empty place on the well-organized wire rack. Taking advantage of the short space of alone time, she whipped the compact mirror out of her pants pocket and took stock.

The eyebrows she’d waxed into more of a slash than their usual arch were scrunched into an anxious frown. The thin skin over her sharp cheekbones was pink with the effort and exertion of prepping for an intense dinner service. She thinned her lips and narrowed her eyes, jutting her jaw determinedly at her own reflection.

Could she really carry off this act for two full weeks?

Okay, realistically...maybe not. But she was sure as hell going to give it her best shot. And if—when—she was found out, at the very least she would have made her point about the stupid, bass-ackward blindness of the culinary world when it came to women in professional kitchens.

She’d hold her own against the other chef wannabes, and show the world she wasn’t the best “female chef” in Manhattan—she was one of the best chefs, period.

By the time prep was done and the first dinner ticket came in, Colby was starting to hit her stride. She’d assessed her competitors over the course of the afternoon, and only one of them, a grimly silent Asian guy who’d staged under the same Michelin-starred French chef who’d trained Dominic Fevre, stood out.